Snuggle
by Nyxelestia
Summary: Arthur blinked awake to the rather bizarre sight of Merlin dressed up as a giant teddy bear." In which there are teddy bears. And hot chocolate. And snuggling. Not necessarily in that order. slash


**Snuggle**

**A/N:**** Inspired by a fic and a comment on it on LJ from the Pudsey!AU!Meme: **_Can I say that I adore you for writing this? Morgana being in the habit of filching Pudsey? **Arthur making a teddy bear out of Merlin?** I loooooove this. I want to print this and read it once a day. Thanks for sharing!!!!_

_

* * *

_

Arthur blinked awake to the rather bizarre sight of Merlin dressed up as a giant teddy bear. Puttering around the on-call room in a big, white bear suit with a red heart on his chest, a bear head and mouth hanging off the back of it like a hood, he looked ridiculous.

And it really said something that this wasn't one of the most unusual things he's seen when dealing with Merlin.

"What the hell are you dressed as?" Arthur groaned awake, sitting up in the small bunk, careful not to hit his head on the bunk above him.

"Arthur!" Merlin greeted with a cheery grin. "Evening!"

"Why the hell are you dressed like that?" Arthur asked again, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as he swung his legs off the bed.

"I volunteered to dress up for the kids," Merlin said, grinning. "God, it was fun, they loved it. Great to see them in the play wards, too. Those twins who have cancer? They're in remission, and this girl with the aortic valve stenosis is recovering so well, she's even amazing us! And this kid with endocarditis nearly died a few days ago, so it was absolutely wonderful to see him up about about again..."

Arthur rolled his eyes as Merlin continued chattering on and on about his pediatric patients, and he smiled as Merlin set a steaming mug of hot chocolate in front of Arthur.

"You know you look ridiculous, right?" Arthur said, even as he lifted it up and sipped from it gratefully.

Merlin rolled his eyes, and stuck out his tongue - which Arthur did _not_ focus on - and stood back, before saying, "Close your eyes."

Arthur frowned. "_What_?!"

"Close your eyes!"

Eyeing Merlin warily, Arthur set down the mug and did as instructed, and heard Merlin pad over to the corner by the loo, and come back a moment later, to which Arthur heard him stand on the other side of the coffee table in front of him, before he said, "Okay, open!"

Arthur opened his eyes and felt his eyebrows promptly shoot up into his hairline as he spied Merlin standing before him in that ridiculous bear suit, holding a matching white teddy half his side actually _holding_ a big red heart in its arms, complete with "I WUV YOU" plastered across the front.

"What the hell...?" he asked, eyebrows slowly lowering.

Merlin grinned. "You always complain about having no one to cuddle with whenever I get called away. Well, this is my answer."

Arthur snorted dubious as Merlin pulled up the hood to the stupid bear suit. "Some girl remembered seeing this in her attic when she saw me, so she pestered her parents to clean it up and give it to me, today."

Now Arthur shook his head in amusement. "Of course, Merlin, only you..."

It amazed Arthur, sometimes, that Merlin could be such an intelligent doctor at times, and yet be equally capable of idiotic things like this. He took in the sight of Merlin sitting on the bed beside him, holding a giant teddy bear that matched his stupid suit and couldn't help but laugh.

Merlin took this well, setting the bear on the end of the bed, before poking and prodding Arthur back onto the bed, and laying down beside him. Too tired to really argue much, he just conceded and wrapped his arms around around Merlin, pulling down the hood to press his face into Merlin's hair.

"We probably don't have long 'til we're paged, again," Arthur said.

"You're the one who wanted to work Trauma," Merlin grumbled. "You could've been a pediatric nurse and worked with me! It would've been brilliant, working together through all this hell and then meeting up in my office for a mid-day shag-"

"I work well in Trauma," Arthur said. "All the adrenaline is good for me."

"And the stress? That's not good for you."

"And watching children die every other week is? Look, both our jobs suck and we'll never leave them unless someone holds us a gunpoint. Just get some sleep, you giant teddy bear."

Merlin turned with a grin on his face, and he leaned in to kiss Arthur's lips, before turning back and snuggling in for the short haul they had.


End file.
